Effective Website Home Pages

Posted by Phyllis Zimbler Miller on Sep 5, 2009 in Tips and Tricks (Hacks), Web | 1 comment

Have you ever visited a website where there is so much happening on the home page you have no idea what the website is about or what you are supposed to do? We’re not talking flash or intro pages – just a “simple” home page that has numerous columns, a cutesy banner header that’s very hard to read, no clear headline, and so cluttered you don’t know where to look first or second or third?

If your purpose is to attract and convert traffic for people to say yes to your products or services, then you need to reduce this clutter in order for people to know what you’re about and what you want them to do.

Here are 7 tips for reducing website home page clutter:

1. Take everything off the home page except the promotion of whatever is the main purpose of the site. In other words, write a headline that tells what the benefits are for a site visitor sticking around for more than a half second. And then have effective copy in easily read type that builds on the headline, but not more than a few SHORT paragraphs.

2. Remove any art that has nothing to do with the website. A sunset may be beautiful, but if it has nothing to do with your products or services – remove it. This unconnected art confuses people and takes up valuable real estate on your home page.

3.  Put all information that does not relate to the main purpose of the site on other pages.  In other words, don’t surround or drown your most important message with messages of lesser importance.

4.  Do not use reverse type on black background for large blocks of text.  Many, many website owners think this looks cool – white or yellow type on a black background. But then these website owners have to read their own copy. Website visitors are under no obligation to do so – and probably won’t if you make it so hard to read.

5.  Make sure you have metatags and that those tags are effective. Best to use only a few keywords (so you don’t look as if you are keyword stuffing). Besides having an effective title metatag, which shows up on the topmost bar of a computer screen, the description metatag is the most important metatag. This description should be a clear “pitch” for what you have on offer.

6.  Unless your site is only a blog, do not have long pages of copy that require scrolling down, down, down.  Use links to send people to additional short pages for more information.

7.  Make the navigation buttons very clear so people know what to do. If they can’t instantly find how to navigate your site, they will probably navigate away from it. And make sure your nav buttons are big enough that the wording on them can be easily read.

If you follow these 7 tips, you’ll be well on your way to having an uncluttered website home page – a home page that clearly promotes the services or products you have on offer.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller’s company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com combines traditional marketing principles with the power of Internet marketing strategies to promote your business more effectively. She’s also a National Internet Business Examiner at www.InternetBizBlogger.com.